The environmental group Toxics Watch is critical of a recently released ASSOCHAM study that calculates that 2,500 MW of electricity can be safely produced using municipal and industrial waste

Environmental groups have criticised a report by the leading industrial body ASSOCHAM for advocating waste maximisation in order to generate more electricity.

‘Mitigating Climate Change: The Indian Perspective', released on June 12, 2008, says that around 40,000 million tonnes of solid waste and 5,000 million cubic metres of liquid waste is generated every year in urban areas of the country. This can be suitably recycled to generate power. About 1,500 MW of power can be generated from urban and municipal waste by setting up waste-to-energy projects, and an additional 1,000 MW of industrial waste in the country by 2010. This would cost around Rs 2 billion.

The proposal is not only “unsustainable from the point of energy economics, but also distorts waste management since it does not automatically lead to waste minimisation and sustainable waste behaviour. The issue becomes more complex if high-heat thermal technologies such as incineration, pyrolysis or gasification are used for waste treatment,” says a Toxics Watch press release.

Toxics Watch argues that it is not viable to use burn techniques such as gasification, pyrolysis and incineration because they are technically inappropriate for Indian garbage which has a calorific value of 800 cal/kg. Burning the waste would require at least 1,500 cal/kg, or else auxiliary fuel was needed. Undesirable materials such as plastics and waste oils could then be used as a fuel supplement. “The use of backup fuel not only demolishes the rationale for the project, that is, garbage disposal, but also makes the process more uneconomical and unprofitable than it already is.”

The NGO says that, in theory, a properly designed thermal process such as an incinerator should convert simple hydrocarbons into nothing other than carbon dioxide and water. But in practice, the garbage contains chemicals that escape pollution-control devices through airborne emissions, or concentrate in the ash residue, which is typically disposed of in landfills or stockpiled above the ground. These pollutants are particulate matter, heavy metals, acid gases, oxides of nitrogen and products of incomplete combustion, including chlorinated organic compounds, and, as with all combustion devices, large quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is considered to be one of the major contributors of global climatic change.

Toxics Watch is protesting against the Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company Pvt Ltd for its dioxins-emitting incinerator-based municipal waste-to-electricity plants in residential areas of Delhi.

“These companies are claiming that there will be no heavy metal laden fly ash, no stack and no emissions that pose a risk to health and environment... these claims are manifestly incorrect and they pose a grave risk to human health due to toxic emissions from incineration and co-incineration processes,” claims Toxics Watch.

The NGO says that these processes involve incineration/combustion as an essential component. All of these technologies emit dioxins and other harmful pollutants, and are defined as incineration by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Dioxin is the common name for 75 toxic chemicals that are unwanted by-products of manufacturing and combustion processes when chlorine and carbon-containing materials are combined.

The answer, say environmentalists, lies in promoting low-cost solutions stressing a zero-waste strategy to deal with garbage. The ideal resource management strategy for municipal solid waste is to avoid its generation in the first place. This implies changing production and consumption patterns to eliminate the use of disposable, non-reusable, non-returnable products and packaging. The alternatives include waste reduction, waste segregation, reuse and extended use, recycling, biomethanation technology, composting and vermicomposting.

Source: Toxics Watch, June 18, 2008
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